Can less be more? the impact of robot social behaviour on human learning

In a large number of human-robot interaction (HRI) studies, the aim is often to improve the social behaviour of a robot in order to provide a better interaction experience. Increasingly, companion robots are not being used merely as interaction partners, but to also help achieve a goal. One such goal is education, which encompasses many other factors such as behaviour change and motivation. In this paper we question whether robot social behaviour helps or hinders in this context, and challenge an often underlying assumption that robot social behaviour and task outcomes are only positively related. Drawing on both human-human interaction and human-robot interaction studies we hypothesise a curvilinear relationship between social robot behaviour and human task performance in the short-term, highlighting a possible trade-off between social cues and learning. However, we posit that this relationship is likely to change over time, with longer interaction periods favouring more social robots.